A Once Violent Sun Gave Birth To Life, Climates On Earth: Study

A violent sun may have been responsible for the early life forms on Earth. A study suggested that the youthful Sun's powerful flares, like that of a thousand trillion atomic bomb explosion, have sowed life on the planet. With such violence, this could explain how the Earth became favorable to life, when the planet including its star, were much colder four billion years ago.

When the violent Sun was just a third fainter compared to what it is today, it was probably more explosive. The analysis was written by the research team in the journal Nature Geoscience, which also noted that the super-flares may have shattered nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere, producing the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide and hydrogen cyanide to warm the planet. The nitrogen, in the way it will have survived in the atmosphere of a young Earth, is not chemically reactive, although it is important for all life forms. It has to be converted into a more accessible form, and this can be done with the help of a very high temperature, NDTV reported.

The study about the violent Sun was based on the observations made through a telescope, monitoring on other stars that resemble the Earth's Sun during the initial few hundred million years of life and models of the chemistry of the atmosphere of the young planet. With no efficient greenhouse gas that can trap the heat of the Sun, Earth will be a snowball instead of a warm and wet planet that can cradle life four billion years ago.

According to research co-author Vladimir Airapetian, the new model solves the "Faint Young Sun" mystery by the effective production of laughing gas in the lower atmosphere of the Earth during that period. Airapetian also added that their model characterizes the cosmic factor that is needed to produce life's biological molecules.

The findings about the violent Sun may have some effects on the climates as well as the likelihood biology of terrestrial exoplanets that orbit the young Sun-like stars, specifically those with strong super stellar storms, according to Phys.Org.